A remarkable moment in history for observers is witnessing dictators being caught off guard. This pattern has been repeated throughout time: dictators always consider their downfall impossible. From Mussolini and Hitler to Ceaușescu, Saddam Hussein, Ben Ali, and Gaddafi, none could foresee their grim fate, even a day before their regimes collapsed.
Dictators share common traits that inevitably lead to their demise:
1. They fail to learn from the history and downfall of other dictators.
2. They surround themselves with sycophants and lowly individuals, who are the first to abandon them in times of crisis.
3. They have an unhealthy and delusional belief in their own invincibility.
Now, Bashar al-Assad, another dictator, has been consigned to the graveyard of history, marking the end of the Assad family’s 50-year rule over Syria. According to media reports, Bashar al-Assad has fled Syria, though his destination remains unknown. Syria’s military and security forces refused to defend him or confront his opponents.
Bashar al-Assad and Syria’s Ba’ath Party established one of the most ruthless regimes in the Middle East. To cling to power, Assad unleashed a bloodbath and committed atrocities that defy the limits of language and imagination.
Born on September 11, 1965, Bashar al-Assad came to power in 2000 after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, in a fraudulent and staged election that granted him “lifetime presidency.” Initially, his elder brother, Basil al-Assad, was designated to succeed their father, but Basil died in a car accident in 1994. At the time of his father’s death, Bashar was studying ophthalmology in London. He abandoned his studies and returned to Damascus.
Many Syrians hoped that Bashar al-Assad, having experienced life in a free and democratic European country, would initiate wide-ranging political reforms and steer Syria toward democracy. However, not only did this fail to materialize, but Bashar al-Assad became one of the most callous dictators in the Middle East, with the blood of tens of thousands of Syrians weighing heavily on his conscience.
Following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, The New York Times reported that Iranian diplomats and citizens had fled Syria. Some returned to Tehran by plane, while others crossed land borders to Lebanon, Iraq, or the port of Latakia.
Today, the world is more hostile than ever toward dictators. Not long before the Syrian uprising, Bashar al-Assad claimed that the wave of unrest sweeping Arab countries would never reach Syria because “the Syrian people are satisfied with their situation.”
But history has once again shown that those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. A regime may be seized by the sword, but it cannot be maintained by it.
